About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Friday, May 6, 2016

Turkey's Davutoglu quits because of rift with Erdogan

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's prime minister and leader of the ruling AK Party, has said he will not seek a new term after last-ditch talks aimed
at easing tensions between him and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Davutoglu held a news conference on Thursday after a gathering of the party's central executive committee.
"I came to the conclusion [a change in] leader of the party and the Prime Ministerial position would serve a better purpose," he said. "This must be carried out in a peaceful way, keeping with the integrity of the party."
After a 90-minute crisis meeting on Wednesday that local media described as critical for Davutoglu's future, domestic news organisations CNN-Turk and NTV reported that an extraordinary congress would likely signal his exit. The congress will be held on May 22. Reports from Turkey suggest that Erdogan had demanded Davutoglu's resignation following yesterday's meeting. According to AKP convention, the posts of party boss and head of government always go to the same person.Tension had reportedly been growing between the men for months. Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Ankara, said differences had emerged on both domestic and foreign policy issues, despite both men trying to play it down."Over the last 10 days, when the prime minister went to Doha to open a Turkish military base, the AK Party clipped his wings in one sense and took away his powers to appoint local and provincial party leaders. That didn't go down very well," she said.
"Then mysteriously, two days later, a blog appeared on the internet'The Pelican Brief' by an Erdogan loyalist taking down Davutoglu step by step on how he didn't perform well enough as prime minister."
According to Al-Jazeera are Transport Minister Binali Yildirim and the youthful Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, 38, who is married to the president's eldest daughter, Esra, among the protential successors of Davutoglu.